I hated my life until I met Mr. Henry Joe. It’s funny how it sometimes takes a whole separate person to make someone change their mind about everything, but that’s how it happened, and I think that’s why I’m still around today. Movies are always talking about these smalltown heroes that come out of nowhere, and to an extent I guess they’ve got it right. But it doesn’t happen like the movies. If someone ever said it did, they were wrong.

The first time I ever saw Mr. Joe, I didn’t like a thing about him, and in fact I hoped that he wouldn’t like a thing about me, because then he might not want me to stick around and my mom and stepdad could cart me off to someplace else. For one thing, Mr. Joe was a black man and I was brought up kind of racist. I stepped into his house and it was like a different world: everything looked so different, so messy and comfortable, and it smelled different, like people and must and strange food. It disturbed me. I wanted to get out of there and go home to our trailer, our familiar little box that we tried to make up like a real house on the inside. I liked it better than Mr. Joe’s shack, anyway.

But the thing I disliked the most about Mr. Joe was how he took an immediate and relentless liking towards me.

“Come on in and have some tea with me,” he said after I finished cussing him out under my breath. At least, I think that’s what he said. I always have my CD player turned up loud, or rather I used to, when I didn’t care what people were saying to me.

Tea, I thought to myself. What kind of weird old codger did they dig up this time?

I guess I should explain who I mean by “they.” I mean the principal, the school counselors, the police, my parents--basically whoever was in charge of me at the time. I never left the custody of my mom and stepdad, but they had a real heck of a time trying to keep up with me by themselves. I blamed their distrust of me on the high school I went to. Teachers were always ratting on me for not paying attention, and guidance counselors had been breathing down my neck ever since the time I overdosed on painkillers one night and had to be hospitalized. Principal Burns had all these “talks” with me (she did all the talking, I think) and was pretty convinced that I was “sexually active” with my boyfriend (which I wasn’t, but there were other things about us that she didn’t catch--such as the fact that our relationship was abusive). I was too proud or indifferent to realize that I had put myself in most of these situations, and so, of course, I got really indignant when all those counselors and people decided to put me in after-school programs and that sort of thing. I ended up at Mr. Joe’s place after a long undying chain of therapy, community service, and team activities that had failed to break me. I was trouble. And this old man was asking me to afternoon tea, like I was a teddy bear with a parasol or something.

“I don’t drink tea,” was the first thing I said aloud to the guy.

“Everybody drinks tea,” he said to me, like I was ridiculous.

“Aren’t you supposed to teach me the guitar or something?” That’s what Mrs. Burns was making me come there for. It was an after-school program of some sort that was supposed to culture me.

Mr. Joe had moved somewhere into the labyrinth of cuckoo clocks and novelty junk that formed a narrow hallway, leaving me standing by the open screen door. I had no choice but to step all the way into that unfamiliar territory and follow him, leaving my nonexistent hope behind.

“I suppose your name is Jenny, isn’t it,” said the smoky voice that was my only sense of direction. “Jenny Weatherholt, that’s what they told me. If I had a daughter I reckon I’d have named her something pretty like that.”

What makes you think I care... I turned a corner, squeezed between a leaning cupboard full of magazines and a three-legged coffee table, and found the old man standing in what vaguely resembled a kitchen. He grinned this toothy grin at me as a tea kettle, perched precariously on the rusty stove, began to emit an aggravating squeal. I sighed as obvious a sigh as I could.

“I told you, Mister, I don’t drink tea.”

“You call me Mr. Joe, why don’t you. It’s my name, Henry Joe Weaver. Suppose they didn’t tell you that; I should have introduced myself sooner.”

“Yeah, well, ‘Mr. Joe,’ can we just get on with whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing? I’m out of here at four.”

“And I always have tea at three. You can go on and have a seat in the living room and wait for me, why don’t you.”

Why don’t you, I fumed silently. Why don’t you take your teapot and shove it up your...

I nearly tripped over a stack of newspapers that barred the way to the living room. Well, “living room” was the term that the old guy had used. There wasn’t really any room there to live, I thought, much less to breathe. An old phonograph stood on a cherrywood dresser that took up the left wall, and a gigantic abstract painting in an ornate, gold spray-painted frame covered the wall on my right. Underneath it there sat two overstuffed chairs with rips in the fabric, crowded next to an iron furnace that had been fashioned into a small table. Behind the furnace, leaning sideways, was an old leather case shaped like a guitar. I sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs, pulling my legs up to keep them from being smashed between the chair and the furnace, and waited for it all to be over.

“Tea is good for everything, and it can cure anything.” The old man had emerged from the kitchen, carrying a tray of teacups and the steaming kettle. “Provided you know what to put in it, that is. That’s the secret. Secret ingredients.”

I rolled my eyes. What a load of bull crap. Was this guy one of those New Orleans voodoo types, I wondered.

“I don’t use sugar, myself, nor cream neither. Stronger that way, better for you.”

I studied the man’s face. His dark skin was wrinkled in places, and it looked leathery and tough. A short, bristly beard sprung up from his jawbone, a smattering of salt and pepper on his brown skin. His eyes were wide and a little crazy; they seemed to always be traveling around the room, even when he was talking.

“I can see you like music, Jenny Weatherholt,” he said after a moment, pointing to my headphones. “That’s something we have in common.”

“Yeah, well, it’s probably nothing you’ve ever heard of.”

The old man smiled wryly. “Doesn’t make much of a difference,” he said. “Music is music. It all tells a different story. Or the same, depending on how you look at it.”

I shrugged, sinking lower in my seat. “Whatever.”

We were both silent for a while as Mr. Joe sat drinking his tea and I, refusing to touch mine, shifted uncomfortably where I sat. The silence only seemed to bother me, though. Annoyed, I turned up the volume on my CD player and explored the messy room with my eyes. But I was face to face with the ugly abstract painting in its gaudy frame, and could barely focus on anything else, so I resigned myself to staring at the floor.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mr. Joe put down his teacup, sighing with satisfaction. “Oh,” he exclaimed, eyeing the other cup which was still brimming with lukewarm tea. “I suppose you didn’t want any, then?”

Duh. I shook my head, resisting the urge to roll my eyes at him.

“Well, perhaps another time.” He picked up the tray and took it back into the kitchen, and I sat for a few more minutes until he returned--and sat down with a newspaper.

This is unbelievable. I watched as the old man flipped slowly through the pages, like I wasn’t even there. Is he ignoring me on purpose? Is that what this is--some kind of weird torture session? I’ll bet anything it was Burns’s crummy idea...

“Ah. How about that?” Mr. Joe looked up suddenly from the newspaper, and I nearly jumped.

“What?” I said.

“Already four o’ clock.” Mr. Joe smiled at me. “Guess that means you’re heading home, now.”

I sat up, wide-eyed. “This was completely pointless,” I said in disbelief.

Mr. Joe’s face was hidden behind the paper again. “Nothing in life is pointless,” he said.

I groaned and shoved my way out of the cramped living room, throwing my hands up in the air. “All right. A total waste of time, then.”

“It was very nice to meet you, Jenny Weatherholt.”

“Yeah, sure.” I let the screen door slam behind me and started down the street toward the trailer park, anger burning inside me like wildfire.

-

You, my hidden pearl of pure and perfect love and I’m a living example of 100 percent the opposite of this. If I ask the same questions well maybe I repeat myself from time to time, but it’s because everyone who answers me is a liar...

I sat outside the trailer with music blaring in my ears and a cigarette burning slowly between my fingers. Mom and “Dad” were on one of their rampages inside, and I had thought better of going inside, taking the time instead to sit out on the makeshift porch and suck smoke into my lungs. My mother knew all about my smoking habit, but she had way too many of her own issues to do anything about it. David, my stepfather, was the one who really cared about that sort of thing. He was perfect, basically. Peroxide blond hair, blue eyes, pressed shirt, the whole deal. He thought he was something because he worked in some office downtown in the city, but the fact remained that he was coming home to a trailer everyday because his wife was too crazy to work and his rebellious stepdaughter was “too much of an expense.” It seemed like he was always trying to change us, me and my mom, and our home, even--he couldn’t stand the trailer actually looking like a trailer; he had to dress it all up on the inside and outside to look like as much of a house as possible. I don’t know why he married Mom in the first place, if he wanted to change her so much...then again, Mom wasn’t quite so messed up when he met her. She didn’t really start having problems until after she married David.

Something was breaking in the kitchen. I took a long drag from my cigarette and let the smoke breathe out all around my face, dissolving in the evening air. To tell the truth, I felt kind of sorry for my mom. Even though she was all over David, who acted like she and I were nothing more than figures on a tax return, she was still my mother, and sometimes I could see glimpses of her old self through the dilapidated mess that she had become. She was like me, too, in a lot of ways. While I turned to habitual smoking to calm my nerves and deal with all the crap, Mom became a heavy drinker. I think she might have even smoked reefer somewhere along the line, but drinking was her main escape from David and the responsibility of me. It made her hard to talk to about anything, and we drifted even farther apart because of it. I could see that she still wanted to be close to me, though, even when it became impossible. And knowing that, I couldn’t separate myself from her, no matter how hard I tried.

This wasn’t something I wanted to think about at the moment. I punched up the volume on my CD player to block out the noises that were coming from inside the trailer. David was yelling, and Mom was screaming back at him. I hardly ever knew what they were arguing about, but I did know that if I showed up in the same vicinity, the brunt of their anger would quickly turn to me.

I thought about Mr. Joe and the strange afternoon in his house. Really, what was the point of all this? It felt like I was escaping one nuthouse just to visit another. Sure, it was saving me a trip to rehab, but was it really worth it?

I blew out smoke and watched the sun setting behind the bluish-green hills, over the white tops of trailer homes. Life sucks.

The noise had gone down. I sighed heavily and hopped down from the porch rail to go inside and view the wreckage.

Like a needle she leads me (well, I follow like thread) But you untied me--didn’t you untie me, Lord? And now I haven’t even thought about killing myself in almost five months...

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Disclaimer: Lyrics from “Tie Me Up! Untie Me!” by mewithoutYou.